A new study by Loma Linda University, lead by researcher Dr Lee Berk, and presented at the Experimental Biology conference in New Orleans, states that watching half-an-hour of comedy, live or on screen, everyday has a high possibility to reduce a person’s levels of stress hormones as well as compounds that are normally known to cause heart disease.

The essence of the study conforms to what the best clinicians understand about the intrinsic physiological intervention that is brought by positive emotions like laughter, optimism, happiness, pleasantness, love and hope or a combination of them.

The researcher team came to this conclusion after analysing 20 men and women taking medication for diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol. All took their tablets as usual but 10 were also prescribed mirthful laughter in the form of half an hour of comedy every day.

Stress hormone levels fell in the comedy viewers after two months. At the end of the fourth month, levels of compounds linked to hardening of the arteries and other cardiac problems had also dropped.
While levels of good cholesterol, that protects the heart against disease, rose by 26 % the harmful C-reactive proteins, which increase the risk of heart disease, dropped by 66%.

The 10 Patients who took the medication without any 30 minutes comedy laughter medicine had a 3 % rise only in good cholesterol while there is a drop of just 26% in the harmful C-reactive proteins.
The study has been conducted over a period of an year.